I found a better job opportunity! Voluntary job mobility of employees and temporary contracts before and after the great recession in France, Italy and Spain

Abstract

The voluntary mobility of employees who change employers for a better job remains an unexplored area of labour market transitions in many European countries. We analyse whether and how the recent great economic recession has contributed to modifications in such voluntary job mobility when employees have a temporary contract in France, Italy and Spain. We analyse cross-sectional data from the EU-SILC survey for two sub-periods: 2005–2008 and 2009–2015. We find that employees who have invested in human capital, who are young and who work more than 40 h per week are more likely than their counterparts to change employers for a better opportunity given a temporary contract. After the great recession, we observe a curbing of the studied voluntary job mobility that is likely attributable to the difficulty experienced by employees in finding a job that provides more benefits than their current one, with heterogeneous effects across socio-economic and demographic characteristics and the country of residence.